Empowering South African Youth: BPESA, Nedbank, and SPF Join Forces for Financial Literacy Education

August 14, 2023

According to CNBC Africa, a staggering 47% of the South African population is deemed financially illiterate, with only 5% of the population projected to retire comfortably.  This highlights a pressing need for financial literacy to be included as a compulsory subject in school to better equip the youth for the future.

The ever-changing global landscape and ease of access to information and various technologies makes educating oneself on personal finances easier than ever. This is crucial as it would help reduce poor financial decision-making among South African youth and have positive financial wellness implications well into their older age and most importantly, retirement.

Financial literacy refers to the ability to understand and manage one’s finances. It is acquired skills and knowledge to make sound financial decisions.

To contribute towards addressing this issue, BPESA has partnered with Nedbank and the Small Projects Foundation (SPF) to provide financial literacy workshops in various districts across the Eastern Cape. This initiative comprises of various financial literacy and Colour Accounting training sessions facilitated by Nedbank’s Financial Education Facilitator, Fikiswa Manku and BPESA’s Content Architect, Judy Robinson.

The initiative was initially piloted over a two-day training session which saw 15 former National Youth Service (NYS) ambassadors participating. To date, it has since been rolled out across Buffalo City Metro, OR Tambo District, Raymond Mhlaba and Chris Hani Districts which saw 1 453 out of the targeted 1713 youth ambassadors under the Social Employment Fund (SEF) and the now concluded NYS programmes benefit from this initiative.

The workshops allowed the facilitators and ambassadors to engage in great interaction where a number of key talking points were touched on and discussed. These included ambassadors sharing their stories on how peer pressure and a lack of discipline has lead to poor spending habits and how there was a pressing need for such workshops as their current stipends were their first source of income.  SPF is exploring the adding of more learning outcomes to assist youth with addressing financial literacy in future.